Manila Kingpin: The Untold Story of Asiong Salonga : Movie Rant

I’m a sucker for movies that contain actors who’ve been in the industry when I was a little kid or earlier, so it should not come as a surprise that I loved this movie. 

I was worried at first that it wouldn’t be a good movie because it stars a politician, and well, I’ve not much confidence in them. I was glad to be proven wrong. Still, the reason I loved the movie so much is the group of other actors they cast. Jeorge Estregan was great, but the real bait for we were every one of his antagonists. I don’t think I need to mention any of them, they were great before, and they were still great now. Those are the actors who are worthy of the name.

Production-wise, I thought it was a good idea to shoot it in B&W. Everything felt as if it was made in the early days, and quite frankly, I think that’s the reason why the movie worked so well. Old movies, like old songs, can still kick butt, and to form a new movie from that skeleton, throw in actors who actually act, and use a timeless story of good and bad, and you’ve got a pretty good movie. But I will admit, I couldn’t help check to see if they missed anything and used props from our time, and when I saw an Emperador Brandy bottle, I kept wondering if that was in the correct time or not.

There was something that felt off through-out the whole movie. Their continuity and sequencing felt a little odd, like there was something wrong or something new, but I couldn’t quite place it. Their scenes felt like they were cut so immediately and then pieced together, yet nothing was missing. It almost felt like I was watching a movie trailer that played the duration of a whole movie, and told a complete story.

Anything negative about the movie was quickly subdued by the feeling of happiness though. It was like when you like a movie so much  just don’t care if it sucked or not, in the end you still like it; well, that’s how it was for me. Good thing it was actually pretty good so I don’t feel guilty.

Definitely worth a watch, especially if you miss the old days when you don’t cringe in front of the screen because of the really obvious ‘acting’. 

Segunda Mano: Movie Rant

I had not originally planned on watching this movie because although I like the Kris Aquino+horror movie combo, I felt that the movie might disappoint me. Unfortunately, I had to watch and I was right about the disappointment. 

I got into the cinema, and the showing was continuous so I went in immediately. A quarter of the movie had already passed when I sat in, and after about twenty minutes of watching, I already had a hunch about the ending. Sadly, I was completely right. For most people it may be a good thing, but I had wanted the movie to change my views about it, but it couldn’t.

There was not much I liked in it. In fact, this may be harsh but, the only moment where I had a huge smile on my face was when the cinema was showing the Avengers trailer set to show this year. 

I was completely baffled, because both Kris Aquino and Dingdong Dantes have a good acting repertoire, and yet even their acting seemed to be off in this movie. Kris Aquino’s acting was somewhat too much of an act. And Dingdong Dantes’ is the main reason why I immediately knew what would happen.

The movie, in a nutshell, brought to the audience too many clues. It was giving too much that the only probable bait for the audience is the “shock” factor. That however, did not work on me as well. It may be because I had watched a lot, though not much, horror movies, or it was just too predictable for me that I knew when and where anything would would show up. The acting was exaggerated and was too giving, the script even more so. If they had leveled down a notch on the clues, it might have worked. But it accumulated in a negative way that I was sure of my suspicions about what the end would seem like by the third quarter of the movie. I even knew that Dingdong would show up as a ghost at the end. It was like they had to force another way to shock the audience. And there was just too much redundancy in the movie, that there came a point when I just had to sigh with defeat and discouragement.

I would not recommend this to other people, and I’d probably just tell them to watch at their own risk.